The New Poverty

The New Poverty
Author: Stephen Armstrong
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2018-11-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1786634651

75 years after the Beveridge Report: The shocking extent of hardship in the UK Right now in the UK, 13 million people live in poverty; one in five children subsist below the poverty line. Figures such as these suggest devastating repercussions for health, education and life expectancy. The new poor, however, is an even larger group than these official statistics suggest, and its conditions are something new to our era. More often than not, these people are the working poor, living precariously and betrayed by austerity. In The New Poverty, Stephen Armstrong tells the stories of the most vulnerable in British society. He explores an unreported country, abandoned by politicians and stranded as the welfare state has shrunk. Furthermore, as benefit cuts continue into 2018 and beyond, Armstrong asks what will be the long-term impact of Brexit and—on the anniversary of the Beveridge Report—what we can do to keep the giants of indigence at bay.

New Poverty Studies

New Poverty Studies
Author: Judith G. Goode
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 509
Release: 2001
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0814731163

Stock market euphoria and blind faith in the post cold war economy have driven the topic of poverty from popular and scholarly discussion in the United States. At the same time the gap between the rich and poor has never been wider. The New Poverty Studies critically examines the new war against the poor that has accompanied the rise of the New Economy in the past two decades, and details the myriad ways poor people have struggled against it. The essays collected here explore how global, national, and local structures of power produce poverty and affect the material well-being, social relations and politicization of the poor. In updating the 1960s encounter between ethnography and U.S. poverty, The New Poverty Studies highlights the ways poverty is constructed across multiple scales and multiple axes of difference. Questioning the common wisdom that poverty persists because of the pathology, social isolation and welfare state "dependency" of the poor, the contributors to The New Poverty Studies point instead to economic restructuring and neoliberal policy "reforms" which have caused increased social inequality and economic polarization in the U.S. Contributors include: Georges Fouron, Donna Goldstein, Judith Goode, Susan B. Hyatt, Catherine Kingfisher, Peter Kwong, Vin Lyon-Callo, Jeff Maskovsky, Sandi Morgen, Leith Mullings, Frances Fox Piven, Matthew Rubin, Nina Glick Schiller, Carol Stack, Jill Weigt, Eve Weinbaum, Brett Williams, and Patricia Zavella. "These contributions provide a dynamic understanding of poverty and immiseration" —North American Dialogue, Vol. 4, No. 1, Nov. 2001

A People's History of Poverty in America

A People's History of Poverty in America
Author: Stephen Pimpare
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2011-06-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1595586962

In A People's History of Poverty in America, political scientist Stephen Pimpare brings the human lives and real-life stories of those who struggle with poverty in America to the foreground, vividly describing life as poor and welfare-reliant Americans experience it, from the big city to the rural countryside. Prodigiously researched, A People's History of Poverty in America unearths rich, poignant, and often surprising testimonies—both heart-wrenching and humorous—that range from the early days of the United States to the present day. Pimpare shows us how the poor have found food, secured shelter, and created community, and, most important, he illuminates their battles for dignity and respect in the face of the judgment, control, and disdain that are all too often the price they must pay for charity and government aid. In telling these hidden stories, Pimpare argues eloquently for a fundamental rethinking of poverty, one that includes both a more nuanced understanding of the history of the American welfare state, and a meaningful—and truly accurate—new definition of the poverty line. Hailed by Kirkus Reviews as an “illuminating history of America's poor” and a “useful counter against those who blame the poor for their bad luck,” A People's History of Poverty in America reminds us that poverty is not in itself a moral failure, but our failure to understand it may well be.

The New Politics Of Poverty

The New Politics Of Poverty
Author: Lawrence M. Mead
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1993-07-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780465050697

Thirty years ago, the great national debate was how to help ordinary, workaday Americans achieve the good things in life. Today, we are preoccupied with—and increasingly divided over—how to cope with the problems of poor and dependent Americans, most of whom cannot or will not work at the jobs available. Mead provides overwhelming and disturbing evidence that passive poverty—the failure of most of the poor to work at all—reflects defeatism more than lack of opportunity. In this controversial book, Mead proposes concrete steps to overcome the inertia of the nonworking poor trapped in the welfare system. If the poor return to work, he suggests, American politics would focus once again on the problems of the working Americans.

The War on Poverty

The War on Poverty
Author: Annelise Orleck
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0820341843

Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty has long been portrayed as the most potent symbol of all that is wrong with big government. Conservatives deride the War on Poverty for corruption and the creation of "poverty pimps," and even liberals carefully distance themselves from it. Examining the long War on Poverty from the 1960s onward, this book makes a controversial argument that the programs were in many ways a success, reducing poverty rates and weaving a social safety net that has proven as enduring as programs that came out of the New Deal. The War on Poverty also transformed American politics from the grass roots up, mobilizing poor people across the nation. Blacks in crumbling cities, rural whites in Appalachia, Cherokees in Oklahoma, Puerto Ricans in the Bronx, migrant Mexican farmworkers, and Chinese immigrants from New York to California built social programs based on Johnson's vision of a greater, more just society. Contributors to this volume chronicle these vibrant and largely unknown histories while not shying away from the flaws and failings of the movement--including inadequate funding, co-optation by local political elites, and blindness to the reality that mothers and their children made up most of the poor. In the twenty-first century, when one in seven Americans receives food stamps and community health centers are the largest primary care system in the nation, the War on Poverty is as relevant as ever. This book helps us to understand the turbulent era out of which it emerged and why it remains so controversial to this day.

So Rich, So Poor

So Rich, So Poor
Author: Peter Edelman
Publisher: New Press, The
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2013-09-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1595589570

“A competent, thorough assessment from a veteran expert in the field.” —Kirkus Reviews Income disparities in our wealthy nation are wider than at any point since the Great Depression. The structure of today’s economy has stultified wage growth for half of America’s workers—with even worse results at the bottom and for people of color—while bestowing billions on the few at the very top. In this “accessible and inspiring analysis”, lifelong anti-poverty advocate Peter Edelman assesses how the United States can have such an outsized number of unemployed and working poor despite important policy gains. He delves into what is happening to the people behind the statistics and takes a particular look at young people of color, for whom the possibility of productive lives is too often lost on the way to adulthood (Angela Glover Blackwell). For anyone who wants to understand one of the critical issues of twenty-first century America, So Rich, So Poor is “engaging and informative” (William Julius Wilson) and “powerful and eloquent” (Wade Henderson).

Not a Crime to Be Poor

Not a Crime to Be Poor
Author: Peter Edelman
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2019-07-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 162097553X

Awarded "Special Recognition" by the 2018 Robert F. Kennedy Book & Journalism Awards Finalist for the American Bar Association's 2018 Silver Gavel Book Award Named one of the "10 books to read after you've read Evicted" by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "Essential reading for anyone trying to understand the demands of social justice in America."—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy Winner of a special Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the book that Evicted author Matthew Desmond calls "a powerful investigation into the ways the United States has addressed poverty . . . lucid and troubling" In one of the richest countries on Earth it has effectively become a crime to be poor. For example, in Ferguson, Missouri, the U.S. Department of Justice didn't just expose racially biased policing; it also exposed exorbitant fines and fees for minor crimes that mainly hit the city's poor, African American population, resulting in jail by the thousands. As Peter Edelman explains in Not a Crime to Be Poor, in fact Ferguson is everywhere: the debtors' prisons of the twenty-first century. The anti-tax revolution that began with the Reagan era led state and local governments, starved for revenues, to squeeze ordinary people, collect fines and fees to the tune of 10 million people who now owe $50 billion. Nor is the criminalization of poverty confined to money. Schoolchildren are sent to court for playground skirmishes that previously sent them to the principal's office. Women are evicted from their homes for calling the police too often to ask for protection from domestic violence. The homeless are arrested for sleeping in the park or urinating in public. A former aide to Robert F. Kennedy and senior official in the Clinton administration, Peter Edelman has devoted his life to understanding the causes of poverty. As Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy has said, "No one has been more committed to struggles against impoverishment and its cruel consequences than Peter Edelman." And former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes, "If there is one essential book on the great tragedy of poverty and inequality in America, this is it."

Reframing Poverty

Reframing Poverty
Author: Eric Meade
Publisher: Canyon House Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2019-01-26
Genre:
ISBN: 9780578426921

Everyone has an explanation for poverty. The poor lack personal responsibility. There aren't enough jobs. The stresses of poverty keep people poor. Poor people have a "culture of poverty." The debate among these different explanations has gone on for centuries without meaningfully improving our understanding of the issue.We choose one of these views largely based on the experiences of our own lives, and on those of our families. By looking at why we each choose one of these views over the others, Eric Meade reveals what is valid in each of these views. He then combines them to create a more coherent explanation that can deepen our understanding of poverty and stimulate wiser action to reduce it.Praise for REFRAMING POVERTY: "In this eloquently crafted and persuasively argued book, Meade makes the counter-intuitive claim that we can't address poverty mainly by using microscopes to examine ever more minutely the lives of people who are poor. Rather, we need to use mirrors to examine the hearts and minds of those of us who aren't. Interweaving compelling stories with incisive analysis, Meade makes a convincing and ultimately transformative case. Fair warning: if you are not poor, you will come away with a deep sense of humility toward your own good fortune, but also with a deep sense of responsibility for those who languish in poverty."--Galen Guengerich, Senior Minister, All Souls Unitarian Church, New York City"Meade brings his broad perspective and genuine curiosity to this important exploration of poverty. He reminds us that we are all connected to poverty in some way. By validating the wide range of emotions poverty evokes in all of us, Meade breathes humanity into this discourse. A compelling treatise on a critical global issue."--Sanjay Pradhan, CEO, Open Government Partnership"A refreshing discourse on poverty ... As an expert in human-centered design, I was struck by Meade's emotional definition of poverty and by how he encourages the reader, through real-world examples, to explore how their personal experience influences their understanding of poverty."--Michelle Risinger, Innovation Director, Pac

The American Way of Poverty

The American Way of Poverty
Author: Sasha Abramsky
Publisher: Nation Books
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2013-09-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1568587260

Abramsky shows how poverty - a massive political scandal - is dramatically changing in the wake of the Great Recession.

Poverty Amid Plenty in the New India

Poverty Amid Plenty in the New India
Author: Atul Kohli
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2012-02-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0521513871

This thoughtful and challenging book affords an alternative vision of India's rise in the world.